When the Reporter Becomes the Story

Breitbart bashing in the wake of the true story of Shirley Sherrod plowing across the media landscape is all the rage, so far be it from me to forgo such a healthy community event. Like Dan Rather we see a purported journalist not just twisting or exaggerating truth to show an angle of a story but creating it whole cloth from some perversely reversed worldview.

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him” – Cardinal Richelieu

Breitbart turned Shirley’s story of how she overcame her own initial xenophobe reactions to help a white farmer save his farm into its exact fun house mirror/ horror show opposite – he made it into an example of reverse Racism.

He did that to feed the Tu Quoque need of some whites to play their own victim card and say “See, we are victims of racism too!” This is a favored tactic at white supremacist sites from Stormfront to VDARE and it’s used often by the populist pus head pundits who host those sites. Andrew has always had a “but they do it too!” childlike approach to political discourse, but mainstreaming the white victimhood of the white nationalist sites is really a new low for him.

By vigorously pushing this BIG lie to attack a black woman Andrew Breitbart has amply demonstrated that everything the NAACP said in their resolution about the tea party and the far right was right on the money. There are extreme racist elements in the movement and their first handle on any issue is always going to be blood, religion, or skin color.

The story here isn’t Shirley anymore, rather it’s how a reporter became so narrow in vision and purpose that they forgot the truth. It’s a story of selling one’s soul to the devil in a Faustian political bargain, it’s a story of madness and how someone who was once a rising star went mad. It’s also the story of everyone associated and contributing to Andrew’s “BIG” sites, and how they won’t be able to get that shithouse loon smell off themselves as long as they are there.

As this Breitbart race to the bottom unfolds it will bear watching – after losing cred journalists and websites almost always end up in crazytown, and there’s only limited real estate there. It’s all very well staked out – so you can’t really poach Alex Jone’s turf, or Whirled Nuts Dailey’s dominion very long before you just become them – just like Hotair recently found out from Salem Communications.